


The Food and Sleep Problem

by LunaIrenePond



Series: Stories From A Tower And A School In New York [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaIrenePond/pseuds/LunaIrenePond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper just gives up, at long last, and Tony calls in a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Food and Sleep Problem

Tony, well… he wasn’t doing too well. After the events of the Mandarin he was different. On hand he was better; he didn’t have to worry about his heart being pierced buy shrapnel any more nor did he have dreams about him failing to protect Pepper. She had proven to him that she would always be okay. On the other hand, he was worse. He had worse night mares, so he slept even less, but he couldn’t build anymore suits, so he was jittery and shaky all the time.  
Pepper and he had moved to New York City where she ran the company remotely on the weekends and on the weekdays she went back to Florida to deal with things in person. It was majorly hurting their relationship. 

“Tony,” Pepper said as she walked out onto the level of the tower he was working on.

“What?” he called back as he talked to Jarvis about certain arrangements.

“It’s one in the morning,” Pepper said as she walked over to him.

“Good observation,” Tony said brushing her aside.

“Jarvis when was the last time Tony slept?”

“About 4 days ago,” the calming British voice replied.

“Tony, you need to sleep,” Pepper said forcefully.

“Yes but I don’t want to,” Tony said angrily.

“Why not?” she questioned. “Is it me or is it still the PTSD?”

“You know it’s not you and I don’t have PTSD,” he sighed 

“Sir, you have almost every known symptom.” 

He was cut short by Tony saying, “mute Jarvis.”

“Tony, just come to bed. Just try to get some sleep.”

“Fine,” Tony gave in and headed to the elevator. Tony’s exhaustion took the better of him and he was asleep before his head hit the pillow. The dreams started an hour after that and within half an hour he was awake and pacing on their floor of the tower. After twenty minutes he decided he would call someone. After ten he figured out who. Then after five he actually called them.

The phone picked up on the third ring, “Tony, I’m in India what do you want?”

“Do you think I have PTSD?” Tony asked as he stared across the city skyline.

“What?”

“Bruce, Pepper and Jarvis both think I have PTSD and I don’t think I do but I can barley sleep or eat and I am worried. So I needed to call someone,” Tony said quickly trying to spit everything out quickly.

Bruce sighed, “I’m coming to New York.”

“What? Bruce no, you don’t have to do that.”

“You sound like you need someone there to be a friend and who can speak science,” Bruce said. “And I can do that, so let me come.”

“Okay, but let me pay for the flight and send you my own jet,” Tony offered.

“Well, I’m not going to say no…”

“Good, I’ll see you in the morning.”

**** 

Pepper was pissed when she woke up in the morning to see that Tony wasn’t there. On her way down to the kitchen she asked Jarvis how long Tony had slept for.

“An hour and a half ma’am,” chimed the response threw the hallway.

Pepper let out a stream of curses as she walked into the kitchen where tony was, surprisingly eating a bowl of cereal. “Tony Stark, I am done with you. I will send Happy to collect my things in six hours, good bye.” With that she left. 

Tony had always expected that she would go with a bang and not just a ‘goodbye’ but that was it. Tony didn’t expect her to ever come back, he had put her in so much danger over the years, he wasn’t surprised, and he was a piece of work that she wasn’t paid enough to deal with. So he just sat there, finished his cereal and went back up to his lab and returned to his never ending work. Hours later Jarvis informed him that Bruce was on his way up. When tony heard this he headed down to where he had a bar and tried to drown himself in scotch.

Bruce walked in a few minutes later with a messenger bag thrown across his shoulder. “Tony, what is going on?”

“I have PTSD and no girlfriend,” he responded.

“And you are an alcoholic,” Bruce sighed as he took the now half empty bottle away from him.

“I am not, I drink recreationally,” he said trying to defend himself.

Bruce sighed, “So the fact that your girlfriend just walked out on you has nothing to do with that you are drowning in scotch.”

“No it doesn’t,” Tony said reaching for the bottle.

“Well if looked at the series of events one would jump to the logical assumption that you are wrong,” Jarvis said to the great amusement of Bruce.

“Jarvis mute,” Tony was obviously annoyed.

“Tony, he is right.”

“I know just, I’m going up to the lab,” he sighed as he brushed past Bruce and onto the elevator.

Bruce looked around the room before he dropped his bag on one of the chairs and said, “Jarvis un mute. What is Tony working on?”

“He is working on the design of the tower,” the voice supplied.

“How so?”

“I could show you if you like,” it suggested.

“Sure, Jarvis,” Bruce walked over to a desktop which was showing blue prints of the tower in which each Avenger had their own couple of floors. After taking a quick glance at them he stepped onto the elevator and took it up to Tony’s lab. “There is a slight flaw in your plans,” he said as he took in the man’s lab. The lab was all sharp edges and stainless steel; he couldn’t find Tony in the piles of messes.

“And what’s that?” came a voice from the back of the room.

Bruce made his way through the piles of blue prints, broken machines, and papers with equations scrawled all over them to where tony was tinkering with a machine that had ‘dummy’ pray painted on its side. “Well for one, there should probably be more common rooms if we are expected to bon d as a group, second Natasha’s room is way too dark, and thirdly if you put one drop of green in my room I will personally kill you without the help of the other guy.”  
Tony laughed. “How do you feel about purple?” he asked as he stood up and brought the plans up on one of the few desk tops that wasn’t covered in papers.

“Personally I think purple is a great color,” Bruce smiled as the two of them worked on the plans, changing little things here and there until Bruce started to get hungry. “Tony, I’m going to grab some food. Do you want any?”

“Um, I guess so,” Tony shrugged.

Bruce went down to the kitchen, grabbed two subs and when he came back up to the lab he gave Tony on without saying anything. It wasn’t until Bruce started messing with the building plans again that he relaxed that he was back. “Oh, Bruce I didn’t notice you were back. How long have you been here?”

“A good half an hour,” Bruce chuckled. “How was your sub?”

Tony looked confused, “What sub?”

“I handed you a sub when I walked in,” Bruce smiled. “At least I now know how to feed you.”

In the next few months that Bruce stayed in the tower he tried to work out ways to make Tony eat and drink things that weren’t alcohol. He found out that he could slip tony food and bottles of water when he was working if he didn’t say anything. Yet there was still the problem of sleep. Bruce couldn’t make him go to bed and more often than not Jarvis would have to get Bruce to come up to the lab and carry him to his bed. It wasn’t until tony crawled into Bruce’s lap while he was trying to watch a movie that he had an idea. “Tony,” he said trying to nudge the other man awake. “Tony why don’t go to bed?”

“Hm?” he said rubbing his eye.

“Why don’t we go to bed?” Bruce repeated as he reached over and turned the TV off.

“We?” 

“Yes ‘we’, come on,” Bruce said pulling tony off the sofa and into the elevator.

“Why?” Tony asked as he nuzzled into Bruce’s chest.

Bruce laughed as he wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist, “because you seem to be extremely tired.”

“No I’m not,” he yawned as the two of them got off the elevator onto Bruce’s floor. Bruce had to practically drag the younger man into bed, he was almost asleep. Once they managed to get into the bed, Tony wouldn’t let go. 

The following morning he found out that he had had the best night’s sleep since the first terrorist incident. “Bruce?” Tony asked as he rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah?” he said as he rolled over to face him.

“Can we do this again?”

“Of course,” Bruce smiled.


End file.
